This invention relates to the transporting of motor vehicles and, more particularly, to the loading of motor vehicles onto, and the unloading of motor vehicles from, a transporting vehicle which carries the motor vehicles from a loading location to a destination.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,957,407, which is incorporated by reference herein, a system is shown for loading and unloading motor vehicles into and out of standard cargo-carrying containers or other enclosures which are then transported from the loading location to a destination where they are unloaded. The loading process is accomplished by using high-volume loading equipment to load the vehicles one at a time onto a frame, which supports the vehicles in respective upper and lower positions one above the other, while the frame is exterior of the enclosure. Once the frame has been loaded, it is inserted together with its supported vehicles as a unit into the enclosure for transport. The unloading process is the reverse of the loading process, that is, the frame with its supported vehicles is removed as a unit from the enclosure and then the vehicles are unloaded one at a time from the frame. The benefit of this system over previous comparable systems, such as that shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,768,916 which is also incorporated by reference herein, is that at no time must a motor vehicle be driven into or out of the frame or into or out of any enclosure, thereby preventing damage to the vehicle which could otherwise occur by opening the door in a confined space to permit the driver to get out of the vehicle. The system shown in the aforementioned U.S. Pat. No. 4,957,407 is a less expensive alternative to a related system shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,919,582 which also avoids the necessity for driving the vehicles into or out of the frame or an enclosure.
The system shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,957,407 has one possible drawback in that equipment similar to that required to load the motor vehicles onto the frame and into the enclosure at the loading location must also be provided to unload the vehicles at their destination. Where the destination point is not a high-volume freight terminal but rather a vehicle dealer, it is not economically feasible to provide the described high-volume unloading equipment. Accordingly, using the system of the '407 patent, it has heretofore been necessary to transport the motor vehicles over the last leg of their journey, i.e. from a freight terminal to an individual dealer's location, by conventional vehicle transporters which expose the motor vehicles to hazards that the described system prevents during the other legs of their journey.
Accordingly, what is needed is a dealer-delivery system for loading, transporting and unloading motor vehicles which prevents the same hazards that are prevented by the system shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,957,407, which interfaces compatibly with such system, but which does not require the presence of such system's loading equipment at the dealer destination.